declines anything further at table. Suppose the captain to say, “Have
some more potatoes, sir?” he will reply, closing one eye and leering
at the dish with the other, “No-o-o, sir, I thank you, sir; I’ve ’ad
sufficient, sir, I thank you, sir.” This answer is invariable, and
it is never abbreviated or curtailed in any way. He has also of late
acquired the extremely objectionable habit of coming to the table with
bare feet, which I am going to ask the skipper if he cannot prevent.
Latitude, 5° 16′ north; longitude, 30° 5′ west.
+May 31+
Our progress for this twenty-four hours was not such as would delight
the heart of a steam-yachtsman, for our difference of latitude was
precisely nothing, and we made twenty-five miles of westing, which
would indicate a current. The heat, of course, is great, and also the
oppressiveness, everything being indescribably sticky and soft. The
temperature of the sea has risen to correspond with that of the air,
both standing at about eighty-four degrees; severe rain-squalls with
little or no wind necessitate oil-skins on deck, for if your clothes
get wet they will be hours drying in this weather; indeed, they will
not dry at all, unless you put them on, when the heat of the body
evaporates the moisture. As we have been several days now in very hot
weather, we have had plenty of opportunity of comparing the cabins of
a wooden and an iron ship in the tropics. As might have been expected,
that of the “Higgins” is cooler than that of the iron “Mandalore”;
but the difference is surprisingly little, not more than two or
three degrees. The principal disparity we notice at night, as the
“Mandalore’s” top-sides used to retain the heat of the sun for so long
a period that it was frequently two o’clock in the morning before the
temperature fell perceptibly. The thermometer now in our room stands at
about 85° day and night as against 87° and 88° in the other ship.
Yesterday we caught a dolphin. It was a true dolphin, _delphinus
delphis_, a mammal, the bottle-nose of sailors; seafaring people
giving the name to a small beautifully-colored fish, _coryphœna
hippuris_, which isn’t a dolphin at all.
Scores of the big, graceful creatures had been disporting themselves
around the ship for several hours, as many as a dozen sometimes
simultaneously breaking the water in a space which apparently could
have been covered with a table-cloth. By and by they aroused the
blood-loving propensities of the mate, who forthwith rigged his harpoon
and stationed himself on the bowsprit-shrouds to watch for his prey.
Presently a dolphin shot under the martingale-boom, when zip, the heavy
iron flew through the air and passed completely through the unhappy
creature, whose blood instantly transformed the lovely blue of the sea
to a rich crimson. Here Mr. Goggins showed indications of insanity
and bawled for the watch, who came running up on the forecastle-head
with beaming faces. A dozen hands seized the harpoon-line, and a few
hearty pulls landed the dolphin alongside the starboard anchor amid
the wildest acclamations from the men. As he was to furnish fresh
food for them for several days, however, their joy was natural, and
he was dragged down on the main deck, cleaned, and skinned, which
latter process was accomplished by slitting the hide into longitudinal
sections, and then, starting each strip, three hands would take a
strong hold and with a hard wrench the strip or ribbon would be ripped
off with a noise like the tearing of heavy silk; one of the men, the
facetious Charley Neilsen, suggesting the propriety of starting a
chanty. After this had been accomplished, the carcass was suspended
from the mainstay, bearing a singular resemblance to a hind-quarter of
beef.
This morning we had dolphin liver for breakfast, which could scarcely
have been detected from calf’s liver, and this, with some new-laid eggs
and salt mackerel, afforded us much the same breakfast which we would
have had ashore. “And the flesh you won’t know from beef; eh, cap’n?”
said Mr. Goggins. But we hardly believed this and our distrust was
justified when a strange dish was placed before the skipper at dinner.
“What on earth is that?” I asked.
“Oh, this is a dolphin stew,” quoth Captain Scruggs, with much
satisfaction, “and that’s just pork fat on top to flavor it.”
Whatever it was, the thing was in a deep yellow dish and looked like
a wretched meat pie, the slabs of pork taking the place of crust. But
yet stranger things were to be disclosed; for when the captain inserted
a spoon and sculled around in the recesses of the cavernous redoubt,
he brought to light and placed upon our plates irregular lumps of what
seemed to be coke, while some of the fragments were of that dead black
that pitch assumes, smooth in places, and in others sharp and ragged. I
can assure the reader that a dolphin ragout is a strange thing.
It will no doubt surprise some people to know that the largest
steamship line in the world is the Hamburg-American Company. That is,
its vessels, which number one hundred and twenty-four, aggregate the
greatest number of tons. The new freight steamers “Pennsylvania” and
“Pretoria” of this line are mammoth vessels, and two more of the same
class are now building by the Vulcan Works at Stettin. Their gross
tonnage is about twelve thousand five hundred, with a displacement of
twenty-three thousand tons, and a carrying capacity of twenty thousand
tons. It is marvellous that a vessel should be able to carry, safely,
twenty-twenty-thirds of her own weight. The new White Star freighter
“Cymric” slightly exceeds these vessels in carrying capacity, and it
requires six hundred and twenty-five carloads of freight to fill her
enormous hull.
Below will be found a list of the five largest steamship lines, with
the aggregate tonnage of each.
Tons
Hamburg American 341,000
British India 295,000
North German Lloyd 266,000
Peninsular and Oriental 251,000
Messageries Maritimes 279,000
The Cunard Line is simply swallowed up in these figures, and even the
White Star Line, with all its freighters, falls below them; while
the Japanese Nippon Yusen Kabushiki, with one hundred and sixty-two
thousand tons, exceeds the Cunard, which the average citizen would
perhaps place first on the list. Latitude 5° 16′ north; longitude, 30°
30′ west.
+June 1+
Three weeks at sea this day, and we are involved in the vortex, so to
speak, of the Doldrums, with all which the name implies: intense heat,
sultry, humid atmosphere, a baking sun which glares down between heavy
showers and an almost total absence of wind. We were congratulating
ourselves last night, for at 8.30 we took a northeasterly wind, which
sent us along at seven knots through a sea spangled with phosphoric
jewels and leaving a wake of silvery light astern, like the trail of a
meteor.
“About, about, in reel and route,
The death-fires danced at night.”
But on issuing from the companion-way this morning, lo! a great calm
was lying upon the waters; while the sun, like a globe of incandescent
gold, sent down terrible rays of heat, trebly intensified by the brassy
glare from the ocean. Perspiration dripped from the faces of the
weather-hardened seamen upon the least exertion, the pigs breathed in
short gasps and the poultry stalked about the deck with open bills.
[Illustration: The companion-way]
“Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
’Twas sad as sad could be,
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea.
“All in a hot and copper sky
The bloody sun at noon
Right up above the masts did stand,
No bigger than the moon.”
A typical day of the low latitudes this. To me there is ever something
wonderfully impressive in an absolute calm, when no breath of wind
tarnishes the surface, and the only evidence that the ship is not
resting upon a plane of glass is to be found in an occasional slow,
deep surge, hardly ever absent when in the profound depths of the ocean.
All around the northern and eastern horizon hung superb, dense masses
of violet cloud, descending at intervals in steaming showers, while
broad on the port bow lay becalmed a large square rigger, hull down,
but lifting at times on the swell till we could see her courses
hanging in the buntlines in easy, graceful curves. Nearer and nearer,
by imperceptible degrees, she approached, till at eleven o’clock she
lay not more than three miles distant,--a magnificent four-masted
bark, bearing the stamp of the Clyde upon her powerful iron hull, and
presenting, with her double top-gallant-yards and splendid sheer, a
perfect illustration of the modern sailing ship, of the largest and
finest class. How beautiful and stately and proud she looked as she
floated along, apparently conscious that she was homeward bound, and
fully aware that she was one of the “swift shuttles of an empire’s
loom” which Kipling mentions in those fine verses “The Coastwise Lights
of England!”
“I’ll bet there’s nothin’ ter eat aboard there but rice, hard bread,
and water,” said a croaking voice at my elbow, and the greasy
countenance of the grizzly old mate was thrust suddenly into the
foreground, totally destroying the beauty of the scene. Mr. Goggins
(always Mr.) never loses a chance to blackguard his native country,
which shows better than anything else what sort of creature he is. We
made our number to the ship, to which she replied with her own name,
but which we unfortunately could not make out, though, owing to the
position of our flags, she may have been able to do so.
It is pleasant to study a great vessel like this, and to wonder how
old she is and what great gales she must have witnessed in her career,
walking up and down the world; now perhaps carrying five thousand
tons of grain from California to the starving multitudes in India; now
beating her way round tempestuous Agulhas, full to the hatches with tea
and silk; now struggling against the thunderous southwesterly monsoon
in the Bay of Bengal, homeward bound from Calcutta with twenty thousand
bales of flossy jute in her great body. God speed the gallant ship!
Latitude, 4° 24′ north; longitude, 29° 35′ west.
+June 2+
This afternoon was a perfect scorcher, even worse than yesterday, and
the sun glittered down from a sky absolutely cloudless. Half a dozen
albacores gambolled lazily around the ship all day, sometimes casting
themselves several feet out of the water and then falling back with
such a splitting crack that it was marvellous how their skins withstood
it; and as these fish usually weigh about two hundred pounds and are
some five or six feet in length, they made quite a fascinating display.
Last night we had what will probably be our last look at the pole-star
for a couple of months. The sky was very clear then in the north,
showing Polaris just above the horizon; theoretically, the altitude of
this star is the approximate latitude in, and it ought to be visible
at, the equator; but owing to vapors, etc., the polar star is generally
not visible south of 5° north.
My wife is remarkably well in all this heat, a fact well illustrated
by her hearty appetite at meals, considering that what we eat for
dinner is usually supposed to be the accompaniments of cold weather.
Our noon repast to-day, as an example, comprised a liberal portion of
dense, steaming pea soup, hot Boston baked beans, and brown bread,
followed, topped off with, oh, heavens! smoking plum pudding and Edam
cheese in lumps as large as walnuts! Most people would consider this
a throttling diet on the equator, and so it is, more or less; but
our appetites are so fine that just now we don’t mind such a little
inconvenience as Boston beans bubbling in pork fat.
At supper the heat was worse than ever and we were hurrying to get on
deck, when my wife called attention to the strange, yellow tinge of a
cloud-bank right ahead, which we could see through the cabin door.
“Oh, it’s nothing at all,” said the skipper; but, as if to nail his
words, there came a blast of cold wind, which heeled the ship over to
the scuppers and sent the captain and mate flying on deck. We followed
instantly, and beheld a thrilling sight. Ahead, from southwest to
east, the sky was covered with thick, windy-looking, saffron clouds,
rushing rapidly toward us; while the sea, as black as beneath a summer
thunder-squall, was whipped into angry, spitting white-caps, through
which we were just beginning to force our way. In the northwest, over
against this gloomy scene of dun vapor and dark, foam-flecked water,
gleamed the sun, just setting in golden splendor, encircled with
wonderful clouds of the most delicate blues and grays.
Meanwhile, the ship was in the wildest uproar which we had seen yet.
The newly washed clothes had been hung in lines across the poop, and
they were thrashing about like tattered flags; while ever and anon
detached clothespins whistled by, necessitating very lively dodging. On
the main-deck sixteen sailors were doing absolutely nothing but casting
off the wrong braces; while ropes were flying, sails were slatting and
booming, the bosuns were jumping about sulphurous with profanity, and
Mr. Goggins in five minutes had so far lost command of himself as to
lean helplessly against a capstan, quite speechless. Captain Scruggs
stood at the weather poop-ladder shouting commands, to which no one
paid any attention, such as, “Brace up those head-yards there; what’s
the matter with you, Mr. What’s-your-name? Come out o’ that trance and
git a watch-tackle on the foresheet. Hurry up that handy-billy now;
or maybe you want me to show you what a handy-billy is.” (This with
blighting sarcasm.) “Bosun, get that jib-topsail in!” The trumpeting
of a rogue elephant couldn’t have been worse than the roar in which
these orders were given, and the relief was infinite when objects began
to straighten themselves out and the skipper went below. At seven
o’clock we were doing eight knots, steering southwest by the wind. “The
southeast Trades,” said the captain, positively; “they always come in
a squall like that.” But, so far from this being the truth, the wind
had let go entirely at eleven, and we were once more lying idly on a
motionless sea. Latitude, 3° 50′ north; longitude, 29° 3′ west.
+June 3+
Even Captain Scruggs’s proverbial good luck seems to have vanished,
for we have not made more than fifty miles per diem for several days,
usually drifting about all over the ocean without steerage-way, until
a squall comes along every two hours or so and sends us ahead four
or five miles. The skipper lately has kept his temper well for so
intolerant a man, but it is now oozing rapidly away, and he rolls out a
reverberating oath at the men every few minutes, at whom he rages for
apparently nothing. He seems to think that the most laborious tasks
ought to be accomplished instantaneously, and he stuns Jimmie Rumps
now and then with something like, “I’ll learn yer to obey with the end
of a rope, for yer can’t pull any more than somebody’s d---- cow”; and
constantly asks him, “Ain’t yer got a mouth on yer to answer with?”
I had a talk with Coleman the other day. This man is the graven image
of the conventional Mephistopheles, and arrived, together with Olsen,
at New York, on the American ship “S. P. Hitchcock” a fortnight before
we sailed, ninety-two days from Honolulu. Coleman couldn’t say enough
in favor of Captain Gates (indeed, every one speaks well of him),
adding, “She’s a bloody sight different from this packet.” In saying
which he alluded to Captain Scruggs’s abusive manner when talking
to the men, which is entirely unnecessary and doesn’t do any good.
Sailors, of course, can’t bear this when they are doing their best, and
will make it just as hard as they can for a captain in return. In the
face of several recent outrageous pieces of cruelty on our ships, I do
not think that our skipper will personally lay hands on the men. Still,
you cannot tell to what length he will go when we have been together
three or four months.
The mate approached us last evening and gave it as his opinion that
we’d never see the big steel Bath ship “Dirigo” again. “Why not?” said
I; “she had not been more than one hundred and sixty days at sea when
we sailed.”
“I know; that’s all right,” he answered; “but she was spoken off the
Horn by the Briddish ship ‘Howth,’ that arrived a month before we
left. Oh, you’ll never see _her_ again.” That’s the way with this
individual,--he always thinks that something is going to happen. Then
he suddenly asked,--
“Do you know wot Dirigo means?”
I told him that I did know what it meant,--“I direct.”
“Naw,” he replied; “hit’s the motto of the State of Maine, and means
‘go ahead’”; and when I tried to tell him that that was a very free
translation of it, he said, “I don’t care for no translation; in the
Greek language it means ‘go ahead.’” Such incontrovertible evidence
was, of course, indisputable.
Mr. Rarx, the second mate, is of an altogether different type from Mr.
Goggins. He has more natural intelligence, is very neat and clean, and
is, besides, a far better seaman, and handles the men in such a way
as to get twice as much work accomplished in a watch as the mate. But
I am inclined to think that he has a very bad temper, from the motion
he made with a fid the other day at two of the sailors who had made a
mistake with a splice; and when he told me about an easy voyage which
he had just made in the “William H. Smith,” and added, “I didn’t have
to speak cross to the men once from Singapore to New York,” he looked
at me very hard, and it seemed as though he were “sounding” me, to see
whether I would believe improbable yarns. Still, I may be doing him
injustice.
Perhaps the most agreeable man in the ship is David MacFoy, and we
talked together for half an hour yesterday at about six o’clock. “This
is a tedious place, mister,” said he; “we were three weeks here in the
Doldrums a couple of months ago in the ‘P. N. Blanchard,’ from Manila
to Boston. We’ll be awhile here now if signs count; and what’s that
we’ve got ahead of us?--the Horn in mid-winter! Oh dear, dear! The
last time I went round to the westward was in the ‘Tam o’ Shanter,’ a
couple of years ago now, and we were forty-nine days off Cape Horn,
and that much snow that in half an hour the lee decks would be full
o’ drift. But d’ye know, I’d rather double the Horn to the west’ard
than run the eastin’ down goin’ out to China and Australia. If yer do
get heavier sou’west gales there, you’re hove to comfortable-like; but
runnin’ to the east’ard, it’s a terrible thing to have them greyhounds
a-chasin’ yer. On the last passage out to Wellington two hands were
washed overboard out o’ the waist, another was washed away from the
wheel off the poop, and a fourth poor fellow fell from the upper
mizzen-top-sail-yard, and only lived ten minutes. Oh! that other’s
a crool cape, sir. No, I’m not married; there’s too many grog-shops
around. Now, look: when I landed in Boston a few weeks ago from the
‘Blanchard’ I had a hundred and seventy-six dollars comin’ to me. That
was on a Friday. The next Monday I landed in New York with fifty cents,
and signed here next day; but that was pretty quick work.”
This, and much more, did the big, handsome Scot reveal to me, in
the pleasant accents of his native land, and with that knack of
story-telling which so many ship-masters imagine that they possess,
to the chagrin and distraction of their friends. I expect many more
agreeable half-hours with this interesting fellow, for he instils much
individuality into his tales. Nor will I ever forget him as he leaned
against the pin-rail in the dusk this evening, his clean checked jumper
lying open across his brown chest, as round as a barrel, and his head
shaded by a wide-brimmed felt hat. He is an ideal bosun.
Being now in one of the great ocean cross-roads, we are constantly
sighting vessels, both steamers and wind-jammers, bound north and
south, the steamers being those on the voyage to and from the river
Plate and Brazil to the United States and Europe. Yesterday we sighted
five vessels, but none near enough to speak. Latitude, 3° 40′ north;
longitude, 27° 50′ west.
+June 4+
Our calm hot weather continues with no indications of a break, and
the sun is continuously obscured by heavy, cumulus clouds, though
the heat is scarcely so overpowering as it was a day or two ago. But
the humidity is suffocating, and as we have no sun, rugs, towels,
and everything else feel almost wet to the touch. Last evening we
had a sharp squall at 6.30, for which we lowered the sky-sails and
luffed smartly at the same time. Very heavy rain fell too, making the
fourteenth hard shower of the day. In the middle watch last night, the
mate said that the heaviest rain fell which he had ever seen, together
with a single dazzling lightning-flash and a simultaneous crash of
thunder.
In our lives we have witnessed many scenes of great tumult, but never
have I seen any to compare with that on board this ship this afternoon
at four o’clock. Captain Scruggs had been growling and yapping around
the main-deck all day, cursing everything, and particularly the light
air which came fanning along, whenever it fanned at all, straight out
of the south. Thus far we had not once tacked ship, though several
times the wind had shifted so as to bring it on the other side. We were
crawling along then this afternoon toward the east when eight bells
went and both watches came on deck; while in another minute, without
previous warning, the skipper yapped out, “All hands ’bout ship.”
Paint-brushes and serving-mallets were dropped and tar-pots stowed
away, while every one hastened to obey the summons.
Now, there is always more or less confusion the first time that a
square-rigger tacks or wears on a voyage, though if everybody keeps his
head there ought not to be so very much; and if our skipper had only
let Mr. Goggins attend to the small details there wouldn’t have been
a tenth of the disorder here. From the moment that the helm was put
down, however, until we filled away on the other leg the ship was like
a mad-house at recess. I don’t believe that there ever was heard on a
vessel’s deck such yelling, or howling, which is a more comprehensive
word. Nearly every order given by either mate the captain at once
countermanded, sometimes without knowing it, often on purpose. The
main-deck was full of capstan-bars, lead blocks and braces, which
had been cast off when the order came to ’bout ship; and over and
among these encumbrances eighteen men wrangled, stamped, and swore to
an accompaniment of chattering blocks and thrashing canvas, as the
ship came up to the wind, the mates cuffing and thumping the awkward
ones with unflagging diligence, Mr. Goggins lumbering heavily aft to
administer a painful booting to that hapless creature, Neils Brün, who
has been in almost continuous trouble since the mate nearly pulled his
ear off, a fortnight ago.
And where was the master of the ship all this time? Behold him at the
break of the poop raging like the heathen, while at times he shook both
fists together above his head and swore like a pirate, as his voice
went booming and crashing above the noise of battle. But the full glory
of the scene was reached when, a few moments after he had roared out
“Maintop-sail, haul!” the main-brace jammed in the brace-block and
wouldn’t render. His passion was almost fearful as he called upon the
blank-blank-blankety who fouled the brace to show himself; while he
jumped off the poop and raged away, tearing the braces apart as though
he were wringing some one’s neck. Even the second mate lost his head
once as the old man shouted to his bosun, “I told yer to let go that
t’gallant-brace, didn’t I? Do yer want me to show yer how it’s done? I
will; but I’ll wipe the deck with yer first. Where are yer steerin’ the
ship to, yer at the wheel? Maybe yer’d like to have her aback?”
Now, if we had never been to sea before, we might have supposed that
this was the necessary and proper manner of putting a ship about; but
as we had seen the “Mandalore” under similar conditions several times,
where there was almost perfect order during such evolutions, this scene
was positively astounding, and disgusted us with Captain Scruggs. He is
manifestly a fine seaman (American ship-masters are invariably that),
but he loses command of himself and every one else as soon as there is
anything to be done.